The scenery had shifted.
A rectangular wooden table now stood in the center of thr room. Six chairs encircled it. We filled them.
There sat Mira, with me in her arms, close beside Charlotte. Across from us were Lavender and Eirlys. To our left—Lucien.
No one spoke for a moment.
The air wasn't tense.
It was compressed.
Lucien's fingers drummed once against the polished surface of the table, then stopped. His voice—low and resonant—carved through the silence like a blade.
"So…?"
He didn't look at anyone in particular as he leaned slightly forward, elbows resting lightly on the armrest.
"You had time to conjure chairs and a table—yet still no time to answer the question I asked?"
His eyes narrowed. Calm, yes—but the kind of calm that burned slowly behind the eyes.
Lavender propped her chin in her palm, one leg crossed over the other, a small smirk playing at her lips.
"Rest easy, come oooonnn," she said, drawing out the syllables with theatrical flair. "It's a long story anyway. Besides, you've got to set the mood right. You don't want your noble back going stiff while standing, do you?"
She gestured around dramatically, twirling her hand in a lazy circle. "A story like this deserves proper seating."
Lucien didn't so much as blink. His voice was colder now—flat and direct.
"Enough with your jokes. Get to the point."
Lavender whistled softly under her breath, leaning back in her chair with both arms stretched behind her head.
"Oh my~ so serious," she cooed. Then she turned toward Mira, brow raised in mock sympathy. "Is he always like this?"
Mira's eyes snapped to hers, and though she said nothing, her expression was diamond-cut sharp—lips tight, eyes narrowed. No humor. No tolerance.
Lavender recoiled slightly with a dramatic flinch, one hand fluttering to her chest. "Yeesh. You're no fun either."
She gave a cough into her sleeve, then exhaled.
Her tone shifted. The grin faded. Her posture straightened, fingers interlocking neatly in her lap.
"Right. Then let's get serious."
She glanced around the table, but her gaze eventually settled on me.
"Like I said earlier, we're not safe yet. This place—whatever comfort it offers—it's only a confined pocket. A bubble. Still within the estate's reach."
Her hand swept outward, fingers flicking toward the air around us.
"Think of it like hiding inside a closet in the same burning house."
Then she added, voice lower:
"And unfortunately… the anchor is still here."
Her eyes locked with mine.
Everyone's gaze shifted to me.
Before anyone could speak, Mira did.
Her voice was steady, clipped. Regal in tone, but with a quiet demand laced beneath the control.
"What do you propose we do then?"
Lavender paused—briefly—then tapped her chin with a finger, thinking.
The room was silent.
Lucien met Lavender's gaze.
Lavender's voice dropped, nearly a whisper.
"You can feel it, can't you?"
She leaned forward, tapping her nails gently on the wooden table.
"Your mana… flowing freely again."
Lucien said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Mira blinked beside me, brow furrowing as she turned toward him.
"What is she talking about?"
Lavender exhaled slowly, almost like she'd been waiting for the moment to land.
"Seems you do understand the estate's grasp after all."
Grasp?
The word didn't sit right. It slithered.
Mira leaned in slightly, head tilted. Her eyes narrowed.
"Wait—what does that mean? What grasp?"
Lavender tilted her head, then winced apologetically.
"Ah… right. Forgive me. I forgot your situation's... peculiar nature."
With a sweep of her robes, she stood, pacing toward the far end of the room — her back turned to us, one hand resting behind her, the other gesturing vaguely as she spoke.
"This estate — or rather, the construct it's currently built on — has a suppressive field layered into its very essence. It is essentially rewrites access."
I sat cuddled a little more in my Mira's arm unconsciously as I felt how she stiffened.
"Any source of mana not bound to the estate's core… is rejected. Suppressed. Caged. External mana signatures, foreign flows, non-native cores, or latent sources that aren't synced. The estate identifies them as threats."
She spun slowly, eyes meeting ours.
"Lucien and blonde girl there there." She gestured toward the still silent man and Charlotte.
"You've all had your power forcefully dampened. Which is why you couldn't retaliate properly."
I turned to look up and caught the exact moment Mira's expression twisted.
First confusion.
Then realization.
Then... anger.
She stood suddenly, her chair scraping harshly across the wooden floor.
"So…" her voice quivered, not weak — but boiling. "You're saying they knew about this?"
No one answered.
Her voice rose, the first crack of hurt bleeding through.
"LUCIEN." She snapped toward him.
"You knew? You knew and said nothing? You didn't think I deserved to know why you couldn't fight back?"
Lucien's jaw was clenched tight. His hand trembled faintly on the table, but he didn't lift his head.
Mira's eyes blazed. She turned like firestorm.
"CHARLOTTE."
Charlotte flinched.
"You were with me. Beside me. All that time—was there any reason I was the only one left in the dark?"
Charlotte opened her mouth, guilt pooling like ink in her eyes.
"My Lady, I—"
"Don't you My Lady me." Mira's voice snapped like lightning.
She was shaking now, chest rising and falling.
I couldn't speak. I didn't know what to say. The words tangled in my throat. Not that I could speak anyway, I just stared at her being furious in a way I hadn't seen her before.
Lucien finally raised his head, voice rough.
"Mira, I—"
But he was cut off.
"Family drama," Lavender muttered, voice dry as old parchment. "How quaint."
She didn't even look at him. Her gaze was on the walls now — and for the first time, I saw them.
Hairline cracks.
Tiny, shimmering fractures — like glass being stretched too far — splintering across the corners of the room and floor.
Lavender turned, her tone stripped of sarcasm.
"But we don't have time for it."
Boom.
A low tremor pulsed through the room.
Jet, still bound, lifted his head slowly. His eyes narrowed toward the source.
Lavender's tone sharpened.
"It's begun."
She turned toward us fully now, hands raised to chest level, fingers gliding through the air like she was conducting something we couldn't hear.
"The only reason I was able to pull spatial transference at all… was her."
She pointed to Eirlys.
Eirlys didn't blink.
Lavender gestured toward her and then to Jet.
"She cloaked me. And Jet. In Vitalis."
Mira blinked.
"Vitalis?"
Lavender nodded, stepping forward.
"Think of it like oil in water," she said.
"The estate's restriction cannot bind what it cannot recognize."
She lowered the mist gently, like it was a feather.
"Vitalis is not just a mana. It's... other. A purity that exists outside conventional systems. Incorruptible, unregistered, untethered. The estate's suppression functions operate by filtering and categorizing foreign energies — but Vitalis? It doesn't register. It's like... trying to drown mist."
She looked directly at Lucien now.
"That's why you could feel your mana again. The entire space we're in now — it was cloaked in Vitalis."
Mira's breath caught. Charlotte's eyes widened in understanding.
More cracks.
Crkkkk.
A sharp split ran across the ceiling like a vein of lightning.
Charlotte instinctively reached for Mira's arm
"Mira—"
But Mira pulled her arm away without a word.
Lavender's expression darkened.
"Eirlys," she said, tone firmer now, "cloak them. All of them."
Eirlys finally moved. Silent until now, she rose like mist lifting from still water. One step forward. Then she lifted her hand—
A quiet pulse emanated from her fingertips.
No wind. No heat. Just a cold shimmer. A breath you could see.
It swept across the room.
Over Mira.
Over me.
Over everyone.
I shuddered involuntarily. It was like ice had kissed my soul. My skin prickled, like I had been coated in translucent silk made of stars. I couldn't see it, but I knew something had changed.
Do I even need it though.
Mira breathed in sharply.
Lucien turned his palm up, and blue wisps sparked gently from his skin.
Then—
BOOOOOOOM.
The walls exploded in a brilliant cascade of light and noise. The table shattered. The chairs flew back. I felt my body lifted—ripped—into weightlessness—
And then—
Nothing.
When I blinked again...
The sky was blood-red.
The clouds above churned like smoke and embers, casting the entire horizon in a sickly crimson hue. We were no longer in a room.
We stood—exposed—in a vast, open field littered with broken stone monoliths and twisted roots that looked like petrified veins.
The ground moved. Pulsated. Alive.
A sound echoed in the distance. Not a roar. Not a shriek.
Something far worse.
Something that watched.